Said comments fairly reliably and prolifically on this topic and it feels important to note that no, this isn’t the default culture people should be expecting to be consensus on LW
Could you expand a bit on what you’re referring to when you say “this”? I’ve said a few different things in my comments on this topic; it seems important to clarify which things you don’t agree with, or don’t judge to be the consensus (or the intended consensus), etc.
I agree it’s important to be more specific than I currently have. I don’t plan on rehashing things I have already said (broadly: that collection of cultural norms you advocate for are still among the biggest reasons that many high karma and/or professional users feel less motivated to comment on LessWrong, that the overall culture you’re advocating for is a big part of what killed LessWrong the first time around. This is not a claim about any particular point raised on this thread, but a general point about my expectations about the guiding principles you’re point at)
Things seem worth saying since I haven’t said them yet, which I plan to at some point:
Some specifics on how I think bout the issues raised in the old Yvain post (I definitely agree you should not reward utility monstering, but disagree with some of your framing of it)
In general, my best guesses on how to achieve the goal of “ensure that LessWrong is a place that generates valuable intellectual progress that people can rely on and build on”, which includes many subgoals, many of them at odds.
I just realized I totally failed to put this comment in spot I meant to, which presumably made this seem quite weird / out-of-place / bad-form.
I think this was actually a duplicate version of this comment here, and I must have forgotten I had already posted a version of it. The section I meant to be responding to here your statement that “discussing your emotional state is off-topic”.
(Responding briefly to Vlad elsethread: this seemed like a cultural claim to me – it’s making a claim about what is on and off topic for lesswrong and for particular types of discussion.)
I agree there are important problems and failure modes you run into if you let people take offense and use that offense to limit what discussion can happen. But I think if you taboo all statements of emotional state you also limit discussion in important ways.
(much of the subtext of this conversation has to do with a year-ago-comment of yours about people’s inner-works not being relevant, the only thing being relevant being the API with which they communicate. I think a large chunk of rationality has to do with understanding and improving your inner workings, and a LessWrong that doesn’t have a good way of incorporating that into the conversation seems at least partially doomed to me)
I agree that it’s possible for feelings to be relevant (or for factual beliefs to be relevant). But discouragement of discussion shouldn’t be enacted through feelings, feelings should just be info that prompts further activity, which might have nothing to do with discouragement of discussion. So there is no issue with Vanessa’s first comment and parts of the rest of the discussion that clarified the situation. A lot of the rest of it though wasn’t constructive in building any sort of valid argument that rests on the foundation of info about feelings.
no, this isn’t the default culture people should be expecting to be consensus on LW
I don’t just agree with many of the things Said said in the comments here, but see them as undoubtedly correct, while other points are more debatable, so I second his question about specifics of this nefarious “this”.
I don’t get the impression Said was describing or channeling a particular culture. Rather, he was making specific observations that are primarily concerned with what they actually refer to. There is a difference between the hypothesis that such claims implicitly suggest a general point about some guiding principles that the author endorses, and the hypothesis that their style pattern-matches such a general point and thus perpetuates norms that you consider undesirable.
In the context where the resulting norms are undesirable, the impact of these options is the same, but arguments that are valid for them are different, which is important for nudging the style of discussion in the direction you hope for. To prevent a norm from taking hold, it’s crucial to understand what the norm is, so that you won’t unintentionally fuel it.
Said comments fairly reliably and prolifically on this topic and it feels important to note that no, this isn’t the default culture people should be expecting to be consensus on LW
Could you expand a bit on what you’re referring to when you say “this”? I’ve said a few different things in my comments on this topic; it seems important to clarify which things you don’t agree with, or don’t judge to be the consensus (or the intended consensus), etc.
I agree it’s important to be more specific than I currently have. I don’t plan on rehashing things I have already said (broadly: that collection of cultural norms you advocate for are still among the biggest reasons that many high karma and/or professional users feel less motivated to comment on LessWrong, that the overall culture you’re advocating for is a big part of what killed LessWrong the first time around. This is not a claim about any particular point raised on this thread, but a general point about my expectations about the guiding principles you’re point at)
Things seem worth saying since I haven’t said them yet, which I plan to at some point:
Some specifics on how I think bout the issues raised in the old Yvain post (I definitely agree you should not reward utility monstering, but disagree with some of your framing of it)
In general, my best guesses on how to achieve the goal of “ensure that LessWrong is a place that generates valuable intellectual progress that people can rely on and build on”, which includes many subgoals, many of them at odds.
(Reminder that I am not endorsing anything Said has been arguing against in this thread either)
I just realized I totally failed to put this comment in spot I meant to, which presumably made this seem quite weird / out-of-place / bad-form.
I think this was actually a duplicate version of this comment here, and I must have forgotten I had already posted a version of it. The section I meant to be responding to here your statement that “discussing your emotional state is off-topic”.
(Responding briefly to Vlad elsethread: this seemed like a cultural claim to me – it’s making a claim about what is on and off topic for lesswrong and for particular types of discussion.)
I agree there are important problems and failure modes you run into if you let people take offense and use that offense to limit what discussion can happen. But I think if you taboo all statements of emotional state you also limit discussion in important ways.
(much of the subtext of this conversation has to do with a year-ago-comment of yours about people’s inner-works not being relevant, the only thing being relevant being the API with which they communicate. I think a large chunk of rationality has to do with understanding and improving your inner workings, and a LessWrong that doesn’t have a good way of incorporating that into the conversation seems at least partially doomed to me)
I agree that it’s possible for feelings to be relevant (or for factual beliefs to be relevant). But discouragement of discussion shouldn’t be enacted through feelings, feelings should just be info that prompts further activity, which might have nothing to do with discouragement of discussion. So there is no issue with Vanessa’s first comment and parts of the rest of the discussion that clarified the situation. A lot of the rest of it though wasn’t constructive in building any sort of valid argument that rests on the foundation of info about feelings.
I roughly agree with this take.
I don’t just agree with many of the things Said said in the comments here, but see them as undoubtedly correct, while other points are more debatable, so I second his question about specifics of this nefarious “this”.
Thirding this.
I’m not claiming any particular culture *is* consensus on LW, just that the one Said is describing is not consensus.
I don’t get the impression Said was describing or channeling a particular culture. Rather, he was making specific observations that are primarily concerned with what they actually refer to. There is a difference between the hypothesis that such claims implicitly suggest a general point about some guiding principles that the author endorses, and the hypothesis that their style pattern-matches such a general point and thus perpetuates norms that you consider undesirable.
In the context where the resulting norms are undesirable, the impact of these options is the same, but arguments that are valid for them are different, which is important for nudging the style of discussion in the direction you hope for. To prevent a norm from taking hold, it’s crucial to understand what the norm is, so that you won’t unintentionally fuel it.